


Upset of Morning Routines

by BenevolentErrancy



Series: Nature in Defiance of Nomenclature [5]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Character, Canon Era, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 02:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3339752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenevolentErrancy/pseuds/BenevolentErrancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Grantaire really shouldn’t get up, shouldn’t dress, shouldn’t shave, really just should not do anything that requires moving; Enjolras is displeased by all of this and would kindly like it to stop</p>
            </blockquote>





	Upset of Morning Routines

Enjolras groaned and pressed his face more securely against his pillow – or what his partially awoken mind now recognized as Grantaire’s chest – and tried to drag the blankets up over his head. Something entirely unholy was occurring and he refused to take part. But the insistent  _tap tap tap_ 'ing that seemed to be coming from just outside Grantaire's window only continued and, if anything, increased in tempo and volume.

“Grantaire,” he groaned. The softly breathing body under him didn’t even stir. Enjolras pressed himself up slightly and gave him a shake. “ _Grantaire._ ”

The man in question only gave a huff and turned over, stealing more of the blankets which just would not do at all.

“ _Grantaire!_ ” he hissed, giving him a firm poke in the side, which succeeded in making the other man lurch awake, blinking blearily in the dim, early morning light. The look he turned on Enjolras was one of confusion and betrayal, until he seemed to register the increasingly irate tapping.

“No don’t get up,” Enjolras groaned when Grantaire stood and opened the window (only narrowly avoiding having his head beaten with a long, flailing stick now that the glass was gone).

“Yes, thank you,” he called down to whoever was wielding the fiendish stick. And then to Enjolras complete disbelief he dropped a coin down from the window, after which the stick and presumably the stick wielder disappeared.

“Why…?” Enjolras asked, still too sleepy to fully form his enquiry.

Grantaire sat back on the bed, rubbing his eyes and clearly as tired as Enjolras was; Enjolras took advantage of this by tugging him back down and all but curling up on his stomach, blankets once again secured around him.

“No, Enjolras, I have to get up,” he said miserably, attempting to do just that. Enjolras pressed him resolutely back down. “No, I do. That’s why I paid the little gremlin to find himself a stick and wake me up at this godforsaken hour.”

“You  _paid_  someone to do that,” Enjolras groaned into Grantaire’s collarbone. “You’re mad, the sun isn’t even up.”

“Mmm, they do this sort of thing in England, you know,” said Grantaire. “Pay folk to come abuse their windows so they can get up at appointed hours.”

“All the more reason for us to  _not_ ,” grumbled Enjolras.

“I have a sitting to get to,” sighed Grantaire. “Some frightful old biddy who thinks seven o’clock is a reasonable hour for man or beast to be out of bed is paying me to paint her at such an hour. Which means, of course, that for me to be present and presentable on the other side of town I must wake up earlier still. And, as it happens, it also means that certain bedmates must extract themselves from my person.

“Mmm, I don’t think so,” said Enjolras, arms curling only tighter around Grantaire. “Go back to sleep.”

“I have to  _work_.”

“No you don’t.”

Grantaire laughed. “This is entirely surreal, I never thought I would be playing the keen one in this affair of ours. But, regrettably, I do have to get up.” And once again he made the effort and once again Enjolras fought to thwart him, loathed as he was to be rid of his personal furnace-cum-pillow.

“Well,” said Grantaire who had managed, at least, to get sitting upright, “don’t say I didn’t warn you, you great parasite.” And then his arms curled around the man on his lap, and with a coiling of muscles Enjolras found himself being lifted out of the bed as Grantaire stood up; he bellowed in objection and kicked out as the warm blankets fell away, but he was soon flung over Grantaire’s shoulder and carried out of the bedroom, only to be dropped unceremoniously on the cold settee in the other room.

“Grantaire, no,  _Grantaire_ , please,” Enjolras whined, curling in on himself.

“You’ve have made your bed – ah, so to speak – so you’ll have to sleep in it, I’m afraid.”

Enjolras whimpered, but Grantaire did have the grace at least to go over to the stove and encourage a fire into life and light a candle on the table, though neither did anything to stave off the immediate, early morning chill of the room. He then went back to his room, presumably to get dressed, wholly ignoring Enjolras who begged to be taken with him (walking was not something that even crossed his mind, not at this hour). He dozed on the settee for some minutes until Grantaire emerged, nightshirt discarded and day shirt being buttoned under a blue, brocade waistcoat.

He then walked over to the washstand to pull out the little mirror he kept in its cabinet along with his shaving kit, something Enjolras didn’t always believed the other man actually possessed.

“Don’t do that,” he said plaintively.

With a face full of lather Grantaire turned and raised a single brow towards Enjolras. “Sir, I do believe it was you who were telling me not a fortnight ago that I was a ill-kept disgrace and made some rather disparaging comparisons between my person and stray dogs.”

“I like it,” confessed Enjolras from where he lay. “I like how it scratches.”

“I know,” hummed Grantaire, as he drew his razor down his stubbly cheeks. “I don’t take fashion advice from you in any case, not so long as you insist on wearing your hair in a queue instead of seeing a barber like a respectable gentleman.”

“You like it,” said Enjolras smugly.

“I know. There, less like a street dog now I should hope. How does this look?” he asked, turning fully towards Enjolras.

“Bahorel would approve of the waistcoat.”

“Yes, I was rather afraid of that. Still, this fine lady has rather fixed ideas on what a bohemian artist is meant to look like – rather more eccentric and less poor than reality plays out, you’ll find – so I think it quite suits my purposes. I have been in her employ before – some little sketch she wished done up for a Christmas letter – and she had me turned away at the door, as if I were Odysseus in his beggar rags, because she thought my black coat was entirely too dour for my profession. Imagine! I thought myself quite keen and well-dressed, but taste cannot always be accounted for among the upper class, I suppose.”

“No indeed,” agreed Enjolras, who still had strong memories of the manner of clothes encouraged by the bourgeois. “Now will you stop preening and come warm me, my toes shall freeze off at this rate.”

“I have never seen you so melodramatic,” laughed Grantaire. “Well no, that is not entirely true as you seem to feed off melodrama at the best of times, but I have never seen you so needlessly melodramatic over such a trifle – Patria, perhaps, but Grantaire? Never. I seem to be gravely amiss in sleeping in later than you most mornings; I miss much.”

“You are the melodramatic one. Now come, you can spare me a couple minutes before you rush off to play the bohemian, surely.”

“You have not yet told me if I look respectable enough to turn up at a wealthy client’s door and not be turned away without first being paid. I do, on occasion, like to supplement my income and keep my needy mistress in the lifestyle he prefers.”

Enjolras, the Spartan that he was, gave an indignant huff. “Fine – you have paint on your sleeve, your hair is a fright, and you are still missing a cravat. Happy?”

“Thrilled,” Grantaire replied dryly, twisting his arm to look for the paint. “Still, the shirt will have to do – paint stains are surely a better sign in a painter than the wine stains that grace my other shirts, though both are quite necessary for art, the latter perhaps even more so–”

“Some folk remove the need for such a decision by seeing to their laundry on occasion,” commented Enjolras.

Grantaire ignored him. “And unlike your noble self I have never seen the point in fighting a losing battle, so the hair will do as it will, just as it always had. We have a truce, see: it makes me look no more like a beggar than wholly necessary and I don’t interfere with its domestic affairs. In any case I have been informed that curls are quite the thing this season and if Courfeyrac can wear them I see no reason I should not.”

“Courfeyrac’s curls, he assures me, are a ‘tamed wildness’, as per the fashion. I’m afraid yours are entirely wildness. In any case, I think he would be taken quite ill if you compared your rolling out of bed to his hours of careful preparation.”

“Yes, but you see I am not a dandy, so my curls will suit me just fine. The cravat, however, I was just in the process of hunting down, they all seem to have fled me…”

“There’s one here,” said Enjolras, freeing the cravat that had been tossed carelessly aside last night when they had been drowsing on the settee together. Though then again it might actually be his, Enjolras wasn’t entirely sure: they had both been wearing white ones yesterday. He found he rather liked the idea of Grantaire wearing his cravat. “Come, I’ll put it on you.”

“You? I think not, monsieur, I have seen the sad state of your cravats. I wish to look bohemian, not simple.”

“I knot my cravats just fine, thank you,” said Enjolras.

“I won’t quibble your knots, it’s the rest that leaves something to be desired. A man’s character can be deduced solely by the state of his cravat and while you’re Grecian profile might be able to support such a careless affair and merely look like you are the sort of bustling student who can’t be bothered to trifle which such mortal affairs, I’m afraid a limp cravat would do nothing for me but encourage the idea that I am a limp-minded waif who cannot be trusted to encourage the sweep of a cravat never mind that of a paintbrush. I rely on a clever knot and full body to fool those around me into believing I have purpose and intent, that I might have some control over the fretful mess that is my life, so you can see how this is a very crucial step my daily routine. A good cravat might distract from a stained shirt, see, especially if the day favours coats. In any case, I don’t trust you not to truss up my wrists with that cravat and trap me on my own settee.”

Now there was a thought. But still… “I am trying to be affectionate, you oaf. Will you allow me an intimate moment with my lover?”

Grantaire softened entirely at those words and Enjolras felt his heart swell for the man. Meekly, Grantaire came and knelt before the settee at Enjolras’ feet so that Enjolras could lean down and wrap the fabric around his neck. And despite the fact that Enjolras had been wholly draped over the man not an hour earlier there was a whole different type of intimacy involved in this act, in the way his hands brushed against Grantaire’s denuded jaw, the way he could feel the flutter of his heart beneath the shirt collar, the way his face was so close to Grantaire’s that their breaths mixed while he looped and knotted the fabric. Once he was finished and the cravat was pressed neatly into the waistcoat, Enjolras took the opportunity to cup Grantaire’s face and kiss his softly, slowly, and revel in the feel of Grantaire melting into him.

“Sufficient?” he asked against Grantaire’s lips.

“We’ll see,” murmured Grantaire, pressing in for another kiss.

“Does this mean you’ll stay with me for a little longer?” asked Enjolras.

Grantaire gave a huff of laughter, but Enjolras could see the regret in his eyes as he pulled back to check his appearance in the washstand’s little mirror.

“This will do,” he allowed magnanimously. “Now, I do need to leave if I want get across town.”

Enjolras whined again, trying to burrow himself deeper in the cushions – cold it was he was not yet ready to be kicked out onto the streets. He was tempted to just commission Grantaire himself if he would see them back into the warm bed for another couple hours. Grantaire, however, continued to pay him no mind and returned once more to his bedroom. When he came out this time though, now sporting a coat and hat, he had with him a mound of fabric which he dropped on top of Enjolras’ curled form.

It took Enjolras a moment to sort out the pillows and blankets that had suddenly buried him and raise his head free of the it all; when he did he saw Grantaire’s hand holding out a key. Enjolras took it.

“A spare to my rooms,” Grantaire explained. “Stay as long as you like, I would hate to get over much in the way of your beauty sleep, seeing what favours it does for me; you can lock up when you choose. And this way I needn’t get up from whatever position I have settled every time you come knocking.”

“I… Thank you, Grantaire,” said Enjolras, and he could feel his cheeks warm with pleasure.

“Consider it an apology for this unfortunate morning. Until later.” And with that Grantaire placed a kiss on Enjolras’ cheek, took up his neatly folded easel, box of paints, and blank canvas, and left the room.

In his nest of blankets, the room finally beginning to warm from the fire in the stove, Enjolras turned the key over and over in his hand. He had intended to find his way down to the Musain at some point this morning, but he seemed to recall Grantaire mentioning that sittings rarely lasted over an hour or so, what with unpractised subjects’ inability to hold still for too long, and he would surely have to come back by his rooms to drop of his paint supplies before he could head out anywhere else. Enjolras settled back. Perhaps he would save the use of the key for a later date, surely he had nothing so urgent that he couldn’t await Grantaire’s return and finish what had been so rudely interrupted.


End file.
